Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule, which has been plagued by years of setbacks and cost overruns amounting to roughly $1.5 billion, is about to take its first flight with humans on board.
In addition to the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way also serves as home to smaller stellar black holes that form when a massive star collapses. Scientists believe there are 100 million stellar black holes in our galaxy alone, but most of them have yet to be discovered.
On March 8, a piece of space debris plunged through a roof in Naples, FL, ripped through two floors and (fortunately) missed the son of homeowner Alejandro Otero.
On Tuesday, The White House published a policy memo directing NASA to create a new time standard for the Moon by 2026. Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) will establish an official time reference to help guide future lunar missions.
A budding startup called Interlune is trying to become the first private company to mine the moon’s natural resources and sell them back on Earth. Interlune will initially focus on helium-3 — a helium isotope created by the sun through the process of fusion — which is abundant on the moon.
SpaceX hoped the third time would be the charm as it attempted another test of its Starship rocket. This third launch did indeed go well, with the Starship successfully launching at 9:25AM ET. Shortly after launch, it succesfully completed the hot-staging separation from the Super Heavy Booster, and the Starship successfully ignited the second-stage Raptor engines. It's currently coasting and the Raptor engines are planned to be re-lit about 40 minutes after initial take off.
A startup company called Space One launched a rocket earlier in hopes of becoming the first private entity in Japan to put a satellite in orbit. Unfortunately, its attempt ended in a fiery explosion, mere seconds after lift off at 11AM local time.
The Odysseus spacecraft made by Houston-based Intuitive Machines has successfully landed on the surface of the moon. It marks the first time a spacecraft from a private company has landed on the lunar surface, and it’s the first US-made craft to reach the moon since the Apollo missions.
Astroscale’s ADRAS-J spacecraft, a demonstration satellite that could inform future space junk cleanup efforts, is now in orbit after a successful launch from New Zealand on Sunday. The satellite was sent to space atop an Electron rocket from Rocket Lab.
Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander is well on its way to the moon after launching without a hitch on Thursday, but it managed to snap a few incredible images of Earth while it was still close to home.